


come on sweet catastrophe

by twistedingenue



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: ClintXDarcy Challenge Week, Complete, F/M, not working for shield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 01:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis is whisked away from her dorm at Culver in the middle of the night, and really, the secret agent shit is already getting old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Meeting

 

Darcy doesn’t hear the knock on the door, because her roommate is blasting some form of death metal or something, something with too many guitars and too much noise for her to consider it music, and she’s wearing earplugs. Her roommate has about five layers of makeup on, and is stoned enough that she can’t get up. 

“Darcy, get the door,” Tammy says three times, before she throws a fucking penny at Darcy, who is trying to get work done on her ancient and venerable laptop. Darcy turns around, popping the plugs out her ears with a glare. “I can’t get up Darcy. Get the door.”

The knocking is still coming in short bursts, and she opens the door with a, “What do you want?” and is met with a vaguely familiar, older guy in what looks like the same uniform the fed thugs back in New Mexico wore. His face is a little weatherworn, but there’s a softness to him that says that he had to grow into this face.

“Darcy Lewis?” he asks.

“That’s me on the doortag, yes, so you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right.” She responds, “And I really don’t look like a Tammy, do I?”

“Can I talk to you?” he says with all the intensity of a man on a milk run, almost bored. Well fuck that, if she’s talking to one of the SHIELD guys who classified that internship and made it so that her grand five-year college plan was turning into six-years, she’s at least going to be interesting about it.

“Momma said never to talk to strangers. And you seem kind of strange, soldier, in this dorm.” Darcy leans into the doorframe, catching her glasses on the part that is forever sticking out and causing it not to close all the way if they don’t close it just right. They start to fall off her head at a silly angle, but the guy catches them with ease, and hands them back. “Thank you.”

“Still need to talk buttercup.”

“Darcy, just go already, I can barely hear my music over your yammering!” Tammy yells. Both Darcy and uniform guy screw up their faces, and Darcy immediately softens towards the guy, because that was just adorable how that weary face just lifted into something young and elastic.

“Dr Foster says that if I had trouble getting you to listen to me, that I should say that, what was the phrasing? Oh yes, that she’s had enough stargazing and it’s time to get back to work.”

“Jane said that?” Darcy says slowly, “Fine, in the lounge though. Her music makes me want to murder people.”

The lounge isn’t exactly private, and it connects the two halves of the pair of dorms that make up the complex. There’s a staircase in the middle and the windows span the outside walls, bright white cinderblock for the inside and dingy, horribly uncomfortable furniture (that Darcy is turned out on entirely too often, because Tammy has every right to love sex, but can she please love it in someone else's room for a change. The man frowns at the surroundings, and leads her to a private area.

“What does SHIELD want with me? Did they want my ipod again? Because they erased it last time, and it took forever to reload.” Inane is good, might keep him off-guard a little bit, because damn, that look he gives her now is intense.

“I need you to come with me,” he says, just loud enough for her to hear. There’s a small study group in the far left corner from them that he keeps looking over at.

“And you are?” she sighs, “I could start yelling stranger danger, I’m only listening because you invoked Jane.”

“Agent Clint Barton. We need to take you into protective custody. There’s a rogue organization targeting anyone that has been associated with Dr Foster and her research.”

“Is Jane okay? Dr Selvig?”

“We’ve got them on lockdown and they are safe. Thor pretty much has Jane with him 24/7” Agent Barton says, with a little eye roll.

Darcy quiets for a moment, taking it in. SHIELD has interrupted her life before, taking Jane’s research and practically her life, because she would have already graduated by now if her internship had counted, “No. Not going. I’ve been pushing off graduating long enough. I am not taking a leave of absence.”

“We’ve arranged for you to finish your classes remotely, Darcy, and we can get you back for graduation on time if you want to walk, but it’s too dangerous to let you stay here.” He pulls out a series of photographs, actual photographs from a pocket and lays them the table in front of them. There are seven pictures, all of Darcy. In front of her chemistry lab, eating lunch with friends on a hill on the quad, several through the windows of her dorm, and her mom was so right, just because she’s ten floors up doesn’t mean there aren’t people watching her. No more naked dance parties when the roommate is out.

“Those are my favorite.” Barton says with an impish grin. Darcy is having none of that.

“So, okay, apparently, I need to always be wearing clothes now, but why can’t you just put a protection detail on me or something. Why do I need to go with you?”

“We tried that at first, when Jane’s current lab assistant was targeted. He’s not doing so well anymore.”

“Dead?” Darcy blanches, sobering to the reality that okay, this might actually be serious.

“No, but close. We want to take you to New York, where we can keep you safe. You can finish your school year there and then we will see what happens.”

Darcy stands up, “Okay. Yeah, okay. I guess it’ll be good to see Jane and Thor again. Is Selvig there?”

“No, he’s doing work at a SHIELD office elsewhere.”

Jane just has a soft spot for her former intern, and is willing to keep her close at hand, goes unsaid. Because they probably could keep her in custody anywhere. It’s SHIELD, and ever since they went public in a rather big way after the whole alien invasion thing, they haven’t really hid just how extensive and powerful they could be.

And suddenly it hits her why the man looked familiar. She’s seen him on TV, on youtube, on shaky cell phone videos of the invasion and a half dozen smaller attacks from people with ridiculous names and outfits. He’s a fucking Avenger. This is serious, or at least, Jane really likes her.

“Okay, yeah. Okay.” Darcy stands up, “I’m guessing we need to go now?” Barton nods, “Okay. Um, let me pack a few things?”

They walk back to the dorm room, finding it locked and a goddamned coat hanger on the door. Darcy pounds on the door, “TAMMY! I need to get in there.”

“ONE FUCKING HOUR.” Is the yelled response.

All Darcy is wearing is a thin t-shirt proudly proclaiming her Culver student status and a ratty pair of a pajama bottoms with unicorns. “Fine, fucking fine. Barton, let me take you for a walk, since all those glass windows were making you itchy and nervous as hell and there isn’t really any place better in the building.”

“In that?” he replies back. And okay, it’s not like Darcy is wearing utterly horrible clothing. It’s loungewear. For lounging purposes. She’s seen people wear worse to class, even if she has standards.

“I’ve got a bra and flip-flops on, it’ll be okay.” Barton looks dubious but lets her lead him outside to the quad. It’s just turning dark, and the lights marking the sidewalk paths. It’s just beginning to turn dark, and the lights are mostly for show. She points out each of the buildings to the agent and he responds with whatever class or meeting she has in there.

“That is really freaky, you know that?”

“Secret spy agent. We’ve had agents on the ground for the past two days, seeing if we could just keep the campus secure without drawing extra attention to you.”

The obvious answer is that, no they couldn’t. Not this campus, which has seen stranger things than Darcy Lewis and her classified internship. They lap the quad in silence again, not really a whole lot to talk to the guy about, and she tries to think of anything that she’s going to have to cancel.

“Oh hell,” she says, “I was supposed to go on a date tomorrow. I am apparently not allowed to actually try to have a normal relationship and shit. I’ll have to cancel.” She pulls out her phone from the pj bottoms and starts to write a text.

“Wait,” Barton says, grabbing the phone from her, “Who was the date with?”

“Um, my….uh, substitute chem lab instructor?” Darcy bites her lip, “Don’t judge me. We totally hit off yesterday when our normal guy got sick.”

Barton questions her quickly, and then asks if she has a picture. Of course she does, she documents her entire life on her phone. Clint stops completely when he sees the picture of a guy, upper twenties at the least assisting another student with his experiment.

“We got to go now. Your roommate can have the embarrassment,” he says, pushing on Darcy’s shoulder, “of being interrupted. It’s not safe here at all.”

Tammy shouts when Barton picks the lock and sends Darcy in, with an excuse of family emergency, got to go. Don’t know when I’ll be back. She changes quickly into more travel ready, baggy jeans and a henley, leather jacket over the top. It might be April, but the nights are cold. A couple changes of clothes, her toiletry bag and her laptop get thrown into her backpack, and she changes into sneakers.

“Goodbye Tammy,” she says.

“Yeah whatever.” Tammy replies, not even trying to hide. Her booty call has standards, at least, and is covered up in a blanket on her bed.

Okay, so maybe this custody thing won’t be so bad. After all, she won’t have to deal with the roommate anymore.


	2. Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint Barton drives a fairly standard looking government issued sedan at speeds higher than Darcy ever attempts, and seems incapable of hitting any sort of major road.

 

Clint Barton drives a fairly standard looking government issued sedan at speeds higher than Darcy ever attempts, and seems incapable of hitting any sort of major road.

“My god, do you have something against I-95?” she bitches at about hour four, which should be the halfway point of this little road trip but she can’t even keep track of what state she’s in right now. Not Virginia still, at least.

“Toll-road? Don’t like them, don’t have change, and don’t want to leave the record for anyone to track. Take your pick of reasons, find one you like.” Clint snarks back, because this is about the third time she’s whined about this.

“I just didn’t know I was going to go on an impromptu of every back road between here and the New York City. I mean, one sleepy road looks like the next.”

“Why don’t you get some sleep yourself?” Clint adjusts the radio again, trying to keep it on a country and classic rock station, and Darcy switches it back to her favorite obnoxious pop station. Just out of spite.

“I’ve never been able to sleep in cars.” Darcy says, sitting back in the passenger seat, and she really wishes she had brought something other than her phone and elderly laptop, which is already drained of power, with her. So conversation it is, “I take it that my date was not…”

“It wasn’t going to end with a good night kiss outside your dorm, honey. He’s one of the guys we’ve been tracking.” Barton sighs out, “He’s the….”

“Guy that got Jane’s current assistant?” Darcy grimaces, “Should have guessed. This is my life, Agent Barton. Six years of college, and the guy that seems interested in me is either wanting to kidnap or kill me.”

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that in six years, this was the first guy to ask you out?” Barton asks dumbfounded.

“No, of course not. But it’s been a little slow in that area since I got back from New Mexico. And I’m kind of weird, and guys don’t seem to know how to handle the weird when you aren’t the uh…well, lots of first dates, not so many second or third.” Darcy says, blushing a just a bit, because really, she’s just met the guy, and she was about to talk about her sex life.

“Weird's okay,” he grins, “I like weird.”

“You work for a covert government agency, can probably kill me with a soggy napkin in a hundred different ways, and live in the same place Thor. Weird is just normal for you. Totally different baseline.”

Clint looks up into the rearview mirror and curses, “Head down Darce,” and speeds up even more, weaving through the mostly empty streets. She scoots herself down in her seat, so that she can’t be seen through the windows easily, as she hears a gunshot ricochet off the side of the car.

Clint opens the console between their seats, pulls out a gun and Darcy says, “I can shoot?” in an amazingly confident voice. She doesn’t feel that confident, but she’s from the backwater, “I’ve been hunting since I was eight, agent, and target shooting is practically polisci’s way of impressing the ladies.”

He takes his eye off the road and from scanning the mirrors to give her a hard look. She must look more confident in her abilities than she thinks, because he nods and she takes the gun from him, “It’s loaded.” He bites out, “Distract them at the least, got it?”

Darcy nods back, undoes her seat belt (really, she’s screwed anyways, what’s the big deal now?), rolls down the window and shoots. Hesitantly at first, but she does manage to hit the car following them at the same crappy angle that they were hit at. She keeps up fire, not all at once, trying to remember every lesson, preparing herself for the kickback.

The other car keeps up with them, and she has to keep ducking when they return fire, blowing out part of the rear windshield. She gets a lucky shot afterwards, lining it up that she blows out a tire and the chasing car slows and turns away. Barton keeps the speed up, Darcy rebuckling her seatbelt and breathing heavily as her flies everywhere, and he pulls off at the next exit with signs for a motel.

He can’t keep her in a car that’s going to attract that much attention, he tells her. But they are in the backwards of nowhere, and she has just a backpack worth of stuff and her wallet and she’s going into a dingy motel room with one bed. It’s not even a queen sized one, barely a full if she’s lucky with a strange man, even if he comes with Jane’s recommendation and a SHIELD badge and she’s seen him on tv.

And for fucks sake, she’s just been shot at. Today is full of firsts.

Barton is kind of handsy when he gets the keys and the room is only accessible from the outside of the motel, all the while telling her how to get out if he tells her to run. She thinks he was being protective, though, not anything else.  He doesn’t seem to have luggage of his own, but does pull out a bow case and an ammo kit.

He reloads the gun that Darcy used while she plugs in her laptop and phone to charge. She’s got work she can work on tomorrow morning. She jumps onto the bed, feeling like a small kid. It’s a habit she’s never grown out of and likely never will. She pulls back the covers, keeping them tight around her.

“You should sleep too.” She comments, “The bed might be small but it’s way better than the floor.”

“I’ll be okay.” Barton looks like, well, like he drove eight hours to Culver, convinced a girl to come home with him, then four hours later was shot at, so rather worn-down. He’s at least taken off the SHIELD jacket and Darcy must say that he is sporting a rather impressive set of arms underneath it. If she’s going to be whisked away in the middle of the night, he’s probably the right guy to do it. He’s setting down his phone, just finishing a call.

“I’m not exactly fearing for my virtue here, Clint. Sleep.” She yawns through her words and looks at Clint as he laughs, surprisingly honest and warm. She shuts off the light and is pretty much asleep when she nestles into the pillows

 

Darcy wakes up in the morning with a heavy arm outstretched over her. It takes a moment to remember that she’s in a crappy motel with an Avenger, instead of Tammy having fallen into the wrong bed again. Barton is passed the fuck out beside her; face down on top of the covers and softly snoring.

“My prince,” she groans, trying to move his arm so she can get up. Clint however, apparently is the type to reach out for warmth in his sleep, because it only causes him to roll up to his side and inch closer to her. “Okay, stealth cuddling agent, you are going to have to let me go.” She gives a careful shove to his shoulder, warm and relaxed in sleep, but she can feel the muscle underneath his t-shirt.

He wakes up all at once, breathing in audibly through his nose. “Shit sorry,” he says once he realizes where his arm is and his proximity to her before he practically jumps out of the bed.

“Small bed, no worries.” Not to mention that there are about two layers of blanket between them, she wonders if he runs hot or if he didn’t get under the covers in some attempt at being a gentleman. Perhaps both.

“Car should have been dropped off by a rental company SHIELD located an hour ago,” he says, looking at the clock, “we should get on the road quickly.”

They both shower, change with what privacy they can muster, and grab cereal packets and plastic-wrapped muffins from the really shitty continental breakfast the motel offers, before getting in the car and speeding to New York.

It’s New Jersey where he asks, after another, good-natured fight over the radio (she lets him win this time, but only because the stations playing Rolling Stones and Clint has a surprisingly good voice) what she was going to do after she graduates.

Before she took the internship, she would have just said that she wanted to get a job in her field, but would settle for something that pays the bills, but after Thor, after seeing the difference that people and bravery make she realized how much she wanted more. It’s why she took up target shooting with the more outlandish students in her program, even though they didn’t share the same viewpoints. It’s why she took up running in the mornings, and a few extra classes that she wouldn’t have taken otherwise, “I was going to go work for my uncle’s law firm in DC while I apply and test for Foreign Service, but I haven’t decided if I wanted to go for the political track as a generalist, or the security track as a specialist.”

“Really?” Clint asks, knitting his eyebrows together, “Huh, didn’t really see you as a member of the DS. Not SHIELD?”

“You fuckers still stole my ipod. I hold a grudge, she smirks, “I think I’m more likely to wind up a courier than a special agent, though. If I even make it.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve recruited lesser people and you handled yesterday with better grace than some agents I know.” He’s smiling at her, open and honest, something she feels he doesn’t do very often. It’s suddenly very warm in the car, and she blushes when she returns the smile, ducking her head down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Google thinks I'm studying for the Foreign Service Exam now. The DS is the Diplomatic Security.


	3. Food

“Jane actually wants you with her,” Clint explains as they walk from the garage (some flunkey or junior agent is returning the rental) through the lower levels of Stark Tower, “she’s spooked. Most everyone else has been scattered to various facilities or is just on lockdown, but she wants you in the Tower. I think she got a spare room in their floor set up for you already. ”

“And once Jane put her foot down, Thor put his hammer down?” Darcy muses, shifting her backpack from one shoulder to the other.

“Pretty much, those two are…nauseatingly sweet. But when they are in synch like that, even Fury finds it a little hard to say no. And it’s not like you are a hardship, and technically this was the closest secure facility.” He lists reasons like they are excuses, and realizes that this is probably exact to the phrasing that that Jane used to get her here.

Stark Tower has a private garage for Tony’s use, with a couple that he lets the Avengers use “with permission”, Clint advises. With air quotes and everything.

“So really, he puts them there, and you hotwire them, and then he spends three days trying to prevent that. And you do it again.” Darcy guesses and Clint slowly raises half his lips in agreement.

“It’s a game we are playing.”

“Is Stark aware that it’s a game?” And she gets a full on smirk in response, “Okay. That’s pretty much what I thought.”

Okay, even the elevators are posh. Clint has them go up a specific set, ones that only have buttons to certain floors, most at the top of the tower but a few below ground marked with “secure containment” in bright green. She feels real safe at this moment, really, she does. She leans against the opposite rail from Barton suddenly aware of how shabby she must look against the sleek lines of even just the elevator, rumpled from hours in the car, and a bad motel, not to mention the action movie she’s fallen into.

This sudden feeling, of being lesser in this spot because of how she dresses is more than just a little overkill. Because Jane lives here. Jane sometimes didn’t put on shirts in New Mexico, when it was hottest and it was just the two of them and they could close the blinds in the lab. Jane, who could slum it worse than Darcy on her worst days. Darcy just favored ugly sweaters from Goodwill when it got cold at night; Jane pretty much wore blankets around.

Darcy doesn’t think much has changed.

But Clint looks like he belongs in this space. Maybe because it is his space, he lives here after all, but his sleek black uniform makes him all lines and angles against the luxury minimalism. But instead of making him stand out, he blends, resting his arms behind him on the rail, head bowed in the quiet.

He’s stunning as muscles start to relax, break free from the tension of the past day. By the time the elevator opens into, of course, a set of labs, he’s loose-limbed. His walk is reserved, like he wants to take larger steps, or just meander, but instead he escorts Darcy to the person who wants to see her most.

Jane looks at her like a dam about to burst. She rushes straight from her work to Darcy, the smaller woman wrapping her arms around her, “Oh thank god. You made it.” She says too loudly next to Darcy’s ear, “I was so worried, and then they got Rajesh, and I was so worried that Clint wouldn’t convince you in time, and then you were delayed.” Jane’s back to talking to her at a hundred miles a minute, so really, it’s like she never left. She’s also shaking Darcy.

“I’m fine Jane, I really am.” She returns the hug after looking at Clint with a shocked mute appeal, “You are going to give me shaken baby syndrome, seriously.”

Jane lets go, looking at Darcy with relief. Jane’s got a big heart, even bigger now from being with Thor, and having the people who work closest with her attacked and targeted must be terrifying the shit out of her. So Darcy lets go too, but keeps an arm around a shoulder and says, “I am starving, why don’t you show me where we eat around here. All I’ve had today is a really bad muffin.”

“You should have had the cereal.” Clint says graciously, “Cereal never lets you down.”

“Come along, soldier boy.” She slides her arm around his waist and tries to see if she can get them both to move, even though her backpack keeps sliding around on her outstretched arm. She can pull along Jane, no problems, but Clint stubbornly tries to hold her ground, “Food Barton, foooood.” She draws out the syllables, poking his side with each one until he relents, saying fine, but he has to stop and drop off his own things.

His own things being a bow case, having dropped the ammo in a safe locker in the garage, but she can appreciate putting his things away. He gets off the elevator a floor below their stop, and pretty much still manages to meet them by the time Jane is opening up the refrigerator.

“Oh, leftovers!” he says, “Steve always makes Tony save them, no matter where they are. It’s like day old food heaven in here all the time.”

Jane makes a face, “When is that even from? JARVIS? When did they last get Thai?”

Darcy doesn’t even have time to ask who’s Jarvis when a disembodied British accent states that Dr Banner placed the container in the refrigerator three days ago.

“See?” Clint says between bites of cold noodle, “Perfectly fine. It’s a communal fridge. We each have our own kitchenette if we want to keep things to ourselves, but we mostly eat out here anyways.”

Darcy decides to test the voice-butler, “What’s the newest thing in here?” A fucking light shines on a container of what appears to be lasagna, easily enough for two. She picks up the container, and because she’s been in a dorm with one mini-fridge for the past year, checks for names.

Clint jumps up and backwards onto the countertop, resting his head against a cabinet, and Darcy does — well Darcy doesn’t do the same thing, but she pulls herself up onto the open counter and sits cross-legged.

“Oh god. There’s two of you now.” Jane says as Darcy cajoles her up next to her, and that’s how Darcy spends her first hour in Stark Tower, eating cold lasagna on a kitchen counter trying not to think about what comes next.

It doesn’t take long to find out, later that day her new school assignments have been forwarded to her (she knows she didn’t give anyone access to her email, but since when has a little thing like privacy ever stop SHIELD?). Her senior capstone professor is having her finish up her final project, and that bullshit world geography course is a stickier problem, she’ll have to track someone down to proctor the map assessment that the instructor, a grad assistant with a hatred of Wikipedia and sophomores who think that the research ends there, had threatened. The proctor will be the hard part, honestly, because the list of a) people that care, b) can sit still while she takes it and, c) won’t be called away to save the world is a very short list.

Whatever, there’s got to be a junior agent or lab assistant that she can tie to chair to watch so the instructor is satisfied she doesn’t cheat.

It’s the chem lab that’ll cause the most issue and the most hassle, because someone let them know that she’ll have access to extensive lab space and they want her to do all the experiments and reports, and the rest of the normal coursework. She’s going to have to make a schedule.

Her books and belongings, what little she had at the dorm, are delivered the next day. She honestly didn’t keep much there anymore; the bulk boxes of balloons, glitter and post-its notes mostly took up her closet. She has a reputation for being a lazy, practical joker of a super senior, because it saves the trouble of explaining that no, she isn’t stupid, she met a god in the middle of a desert.

Her books have been stacked neatly on top of the bed she’s had made up for her. After years of extra long twins or worse, the queen mattress practically swallowed her whole last night. On the top is a note from Tammy.

_“So if you are going to leave in the middle of the semester, this means I get to keep the room as a double single, right? Don’t ever come back. I packed up your underwear drawer for you; pretty sure you wouldn’t want the black suits to do that._

_~Tammy”_

At the very bottom of the stack is a thick Foreign Service Exam prep book, and what has to be an in-house exam guide for the online specialist test.

_“If you need something else to keep you busy, start with these. ~Barton”_

 

 


	4. Files

 

The days are a whirlwind. If your tempest is the sort that involves realizing that the only thing you can do is glorified homework, and braid your hair to pretend you are Rapunzel.

“Jane,” she says, “I need more hair to do this.”

“I thought you’d be over the stage of life where you get boyfriends when they tug on your hair.” Jane says, preoccupied at her laptop.

“No, because obviously, I’m at the stage of life where I’m supposed to hit them with a car instead.” Darcy’s got the sarcasm part of their relationship back in full force.

Surprisingly, it seems that much of being in college isn’t doing work, because Darcy’s already doing second edits on her capstone final. She’s hung around the lab enough to meet Dr Banner when he needs to borrow back his assistant from Jane. He is exceedingly polite and formal and does not bat an eye when Darcy says that she’s perfectly able to wrangle Jane into breathing something other than particle physics and organize her spreadsheets.

Jane is actually kind of hands on with her science, Darcy (and she guesses Rajesh did as well) is kind of there to make sure she’s caffeinated, fed and watered from time to time and to do paperwork. No assistant for almost a week means going through her files and asking, “Jane, why do you have a grant application here? I mean, you are pretty well-funded.”

“I want to publish.” Jane responds.

“When will you have time to write?”

“I want to publish.” Jane’s full attention is menacing. Okay, not touching that non-disclosure agreement with a ten-foot pole. Or anything of any length.

Darcy spends the next four hours filing out government paperwork on mass quantities of restricted materials and can’t believe she doesn’t get paid for this anymore.

                                                        *

There’s always someone in the lounge, Darcy discovers when she tries to spend an afternoon watching movies. Natasha strolls in during Mulan and watches for a half hour before disappearing. Darcy thinks they bounded without saying much at all, because the next time she sees Natasha, there’s a small smile on her face and she says hello. The whole team seems to show up for Titan AE.

Everyone’s such a big personality, with Tony cracking jokes, and Thor confused about the kangaroo with a woman’s voice, that she slinks off the couch to grab some water just to step away from them. When she gets back, Clint’s stolen her spot, affecting an innocent look when she starts to say something. Wordlessly, she sinks down directly in front of him, and leans back against his legs until they open and Darcy can scoot back against the couch directly.

Besides Thor, he’s the only one she’s ever spent time with yet, although that’s probably going to change if this impromptu movie viewing means anything. Clint looks still, but from her vantage she can see the shaking of his legs, energy coursing through him. He’s not restrained, but it’s there, latent, ready if he ever needs to use it.

That’s sort of comforting.

“I nominate Stark as Gune. I mean really, ‘I made it in my sleep last night?’ has got ‘Based on Tony Stark’ written all over it.” Okay, self-esteem crisis over, because she gets enthusiastic agreement from everyone except Tony, who was still caught up about the construction of the Phoenix. She rests against the sofa, keeping quiet but now because she’s learning these people, how they act with each other, seeing where the tensions lie. She’s quiet because occasionally barely calmed hands run through the waves of her hair; play with the edges that it’s just easy to relax into the ebb of voices.

                                                        *

“I’m not seeing anyone I know.” Darcy puts her head in her hands, covering her eyes. She’s been looking through shot after shot of the bad guy files with Clint and Agent Hill.

“It doesn’t need to be anyone that you know, Ms Lewis,”  Hill says, pulling out from a file cabinet an actual bound version of the intelligence files, “Just anyone that you’ve seen around campus, or in town, or anywhere.”

“If there was one guy from the organization, then there were probably more. What we’ve been able to tell is that they work in small cells, three or four people total.”

Darcy keeps scrolling on past surveillance photos, the occasional formal shot, and a lot of mug shots. None of them look like anyone she saw at Culver over the past year, and she’s scrolling through really quickly. Agent Hill taps her feet impatiently, “We need you to take this seriously, Ms Lewis!”

“I am taking it seriously. But how am I supposed to remember every single person that I was around at Culver?” Darcy bites off her reply.

“Hey, Maria, give us a minute?” Barton says softly and stares at Hill for a moment. She purses her lips and gathers some files up, saying she’ll work on these and then be back.

“I’ve been staring at these pictures for hours Clint, people are starting to pretty much blur together.”

“Then lets work it backwards,” Barton leans over her shoulder and pulls up a specific file, “Familiar?”

And of course it is, because it’s the guy she was supposed to have a date with, “Yep, the latest person on the Darcy Lewis Parade of Losers dating tour.” She’s still not happy about that, being taken in so easily by a nice face and the presumption of smarts and the loneliness that her last year has been marked by. Good for introspection and getting your shit together, not so much a social life.

“Think to when he asked you out, were there other people nearby?”

Darcy closes her eyes to think. She had taken her time cleaning up her lab space, since her group were slobs who believed in running the experiment and then running out the door. There had been one or two others from her class, and a pair saying they were from another session that needed to make-up a lab, “Wait, yeah, there were two unfamiliar people, I didn’t really think anything of that. That’s fairly common.”

“Tell me anything distinguishing about them.”

“Pretty average, but a little older than most of the people in the class. Most people either fall into average college age or middle-aged returning students. Maybe mid-twenties? One guy was really tall, too. Over six foot at least. Uh, white, but not pale skinned on both of them. Jockish, too, and like the guys that have at least two popped collars if given have a chance.”

Clint is rapidly pulling up pictures, “Any of these.”

“Him.” Darcy points immediately on a picture in the lower left corner, “That’s the really tall guy. How did you do that? Get from my description to all of these and this guy.”

“You learn to read people quickly in this line of work. I don’t just shoot people with arrows, after all, sometimes I get to do the heavy lifting too. It’s all about frame of reference. You were thinking too big, trying to mentally sort every person you’ve seen at school. I just narrowed your options, changed your viewpoint.”

“I’m never going to be able to do this. I want too, but this isn’t coming easy to me. You look at this and can pinpoint, I look at this and see so much bigger. It’s overwhelming.”

“You’ll get better,” he reassures her, “Look, Hill will be back in a moment and she’s going to trash talk for a week if she catches me being motivational, but you want to do this sort of thing, right?”

“Well, yeah. After I got back from,” she waves her hand in a westerly sort of direction “All that, I wanted to do something more than just be another person getting by. I know what’s out there now, more than just the normal person. More than just the average educated person, too. I don’t want to be with SHIELD, because frankly, this whole superhero thing scares me more than anything, but I could be good out in the world.”

“We scare you?”

“Not you guys, but the unprecedented things you are up against. It’s just a whole additional layer of crazy upon the normal amount.”

“You know it’s going to trickle down to every other acronym soup detail in the world, right? We can’t put it back in the box and a lot of the groups we are tracking down will be ones you will deal with wherever you are in the world.” Clint studies her seriously, “If SHIELD isn’t the place for you or where you want to be, that’s your choice. We’re a fucked up place to be, honestly. Our issues could fill a library, but you won’t escape anything going elsewhere.”

“Yeah, I think…”Darcy stills for a moment, was she trying to run away from the new world she’s in now? That might bear more thinking, “I think I understand that. Or at least will understand that. It’s confusing.”

“Confusion means you’re learning. But all this? This is about deciding who you are going to be in this place, this world. You want in at any of this high level, top-secret shit? Then you need to start figuring you out; do you act first or gather information and sort? Both are brave and important, and being good at either is a rare skill, Darcy. And this is skill, straight down to looking through photographs.”

Agent Hill comes back in, and it’s all back to business.

“We got an id on another in the cell, and there is at least one other that we don’t have records on….”

Darcy interrupts, “I think there’s a fourth. Just the way those two interacted during the lab work. They were missing people, and not just my date, because he was far more independent.” Neither Hill nor Barton change their expression while she starts going on about the men, but they listen to each word.


	5. Arguement

 

She’s been stuck in the tower (protective custody, her sweet ass, it’s house arrest) for weeks now and Darcy’s running low on her rations of schoolwork and lab work for Jane, when SHIELD finally hires a new assistant for Foster. She wants to call him “the kid”, but the guy is older than she is, but just looks like a skinny white nerd from central casting. His actual name, when Darcy isn’t making them up is Campbell; he’s from Michigan and is a master’s student.

He also doesn’t like talking to Darcy all that much, which is too bad, because Darcy practically lives in Jane’s back pocket, and that includes her lab. Campbell just has to get used to her. Darcy does quickly learn that she’s still the better grant writer, and they haven’t finished all the kids clearances yet, so she’s still doing paperwork and filing and data wrangling for Jane out of the goodness of her heart and soul.

Darcy had, when she got back to Culver, carefully asked questions about Dr Foster to a few people in the sciences buildings.  Jane’s sudden resignation and disappearance was the subject of a lot of gossip; most figured she had finally cracked under the weight of a nervous disposition and increasingly esoteric postdoc research. Her students as freshman hated her, those that had her as seniors loved her. Most faculty said she liked academia.

Jane’s missing publish or perish. And everything she does underneath Fury or Stark or for the government is buried so far down, that she can’t take any credit for her work. Girl’s gotta get some validation and Thor’s sweet, and Stark and Banner aren’t the entire scientific community, no matter what Stark says.

Independent funding would mean publication and her name out there again. And so Darcy maintains a separate database for her, encoded and secured separately from her work for SHIELD and Stark Industries. Campbell is lobbying hard for access to these files, itching to take on more work and more responsibilities than just maintaining the equipment and fetching coffee. Jane says that if SHIELD won’t give clearance yet, why should she?

                                                        *

Stark, like the asshole he is, is an instigator. He is one that instigates things. He has instigated a prank war. He just hasn’t realized it yet. Tony Stark has made a serious mistake in making a few too many insinuations about Darcy’s low-tech solutions to high skilled problems (in this case, not depending on JARVIS for everything and her old and beautiful laptop).

And being rude gets you nowhere.

Her solution does need a little help, so she knocks on Barton’s door far too late at night for sane people, and since none of the Avenger’s are sane people, he’s awake. Mostly.

“I need your help Barton. It is a mission of utmost importance.” She states with mock seriousness, dressed all in black with her hair tied back.

“Darcy?” He asks, “Am I dreaming that you are at my door at 3 in the morning or are you actually here? The former is nice but the latter could be a lot more interesting.”

“I have a box of balloons and five tubes of glitter. I need an undetected way into Stark’s garage.”

Clint slowly blinks and puts the pieces together, she can actually see the gears whirring in his head, “Yeah, I can help you with that. Need help blowing the balloons up?”

That’s how Darcy finds herself learning how to move through a ventilation shaft with a super spy/assassin at o-dark-thirty, with a bag of tricks on her back. The ducts are tight squeezes, but if Barton can get through them, so can she and the views she gets aren’t that bad either.

He finally, finally drops down from the ceiling where he says is the garage warning that he’ll help her down in a minute, just has to disable a camera and convince JARVIS not to say anything about it, “But JARVIS has a soft spot for me. Or really, anyone who can actually prank Tony.” He is literally gone for just a minute before he reaches up and helps her down.

“What’s the plan, Agent Darcy?” Clint Barton has a shark’s grin.

Darcy’s plan is to show off her hacking skills. All of the cars are locked, of course, but they are remotely locked. Darcy doesn’t show off her skill often, but she spent a lot of time in high school with the dork rebels without a cause, and she’s the one that got Thor a cover name. It wasn’t her best work, but it did buy time and quick and dirty gets you places.

Since JARVIS is looking the other way, it’s not long until she’s in and the sound of each of the cars unlocking gives her a little giggle, ”Now, Agent Barton, we blow these fuckers up, without explosives, darling.” She hands him a tube of glitter, “and be careful with this. You want to pour it into the balloon and not directly into the car. And not every balloon, just a decent amount. That way, when he gets pissed, he’s the one that got it all over his beautiful expensive cars. Happy’s got the day off and Pepper already swore she’d find some reason to get him down to the garage tomorrow.”

“Devious, Lewis.” Clint laughs.

They spend the better part of the night blowing up balloons, cracking jokes and trying to get into each of the cars, even if they can’t get them all filled. They loft balloons back and forth to each other.

Six in the morning rolls around, and Darcy is half asleep leaning against Barton’s shoulder in the back seat of one of the cars. Darcy isn’t sure which, she’s lost track, but its some sort of convertible, one she didn’t have to break into because Stark keeps the top down.

“You are the best of men, Barton. I haven’t had anyone to help me with my leave no surface unmolested wars in years. You got to tell me, you got to,” she says drunk on the lack of sleep, “How are you still like this, so this,” she reaches out and tries to articulate with her hands Barton’s relaxed posture, “Your so dangerous and yet…the other agents are so uptight about everything.”

“You make choices, you can take it with you or you can work it out. I am who I am, punk kid from a circus. Some people don’t know how much worse it could be for them, I do.  That little bit of knowledge is strangely sanity saving.”

                                                        *

She doesn’t sleep, just gets back on her schedule of chemistry labs and her appropriated lab space. Someone comes to supervise her every so often, but mostly she’s left to own devices when she’s scheduled herself in there.

She’s monitoring when Campbell slams the door behind him yelling, “How did you ever put up with that woman?”

“Excuse me?”  Darcy is puzzled, “What? Are you calling Jane ‘that woman?’ “ There’s not a whole lot that Darcy can’t roll with but her friends will always be an immediate trigger.

“She won’t let me do any work. My final clearance is in the bureaucratic backlog, she doesn’t trust me to work on her things, and everything else she has you for. Back off.” Campbell seethes, leveling a glare at Darcy, “I mean it, just don’t come around for a little while.”

“I’m not going to stop seeing my friend because you don’t understand what a gift you have right now. You aren’t busy, this is called a reprieve. When Dr Foster really gets rolling, you will think of these days fondly.”

“I have a job to do and you are getting in the way, kid.”

Darcy stands up from her experiment and gathers what menace she can, drawing up her height, to get into his face, “I do not care about your job, old man, you do not talk about my friend that way, you do not question what you have to wait through to get the privilege of working with her or anyone else here.” She turns and Campbell is at the lab table, “You don’t come in here and try threaten me about it.”

“Yeah, fine whatever,” He grumbles, slamming his hand down on the table, spilling some of her work, “Sorry, sorry, I’ll clean up.” He makes moves to grab a cloth or towel from nearby.

“God don’t, don’t, you don’t know what I’m working with, just get out of here and take the day or something.” Campbell practically runs out the door, faster than she would have expected.

Darcy starts searching for the clean up instructions on the lab when she notices that the table is smoking. She’s only able to take a few steps forward before her head starts to spin. She tries to get to the ground on her own power but falls over, face first, just barely catching herself before hitting the floor and there’s nothing but aching from her arm and shoulder and the warm heat of passing out.


	6. Hug

 

It’s so bright when she opens her eyes, flat on her back and staring into a light fixture. Everything feels so heavy, and when Darcy tries to move, nothing goes with her, too heavy to lift. She’s not even sure how to make sounds at this point and her head just pounds.

It’s too long on the floor of the lab, and huh, that’s interesting, she’s still on the floor of the lab. Not kidnapped and not dead, no matter how much her head hurts and things still spin if she moves her head too much. She’s got absolutely no concept of how long she’s laying there, with her head whirling.

“Darcy, are you in here? You’re scheduled in here. You should turn on the garage feed, it’s epic. Tony is just freaking out. Glitter all over everything, and he looks like a stripper attacked…”Clint barrels into the lab, not paying attention until she gets breath past her vocal cords moving right, “Oh shit, Darce.” He presses the emergence call button and takes a few quick steps, dropping down next to her.

“Can’t move?” she gets out, words coming a little easier now. He runs his hands down her arms, touches her legs, asking if she can feel that and she says yes, starting to flex her fingers and toes.

“Good, good.” He draws her up, lets her lean against him, “What happened?”

Darcy shakes, being partially upright helping relieve the weight in her limbs, and her breath returns ragged and sharp, “Uh….” She groans, “Yelling? Smoke? And then I fell? Ow?” she presses a hand against her shoulder, “Yeah, ow. You’re comfy.” She laughs and tries to move closer, “I don’t think my head’s on right, Clint. Why was there so much yelling?”

“You’re okay, Darcy, you’re okay. I’ll get the video pulled up, figure out what happened. Response team will be here in a minute.”

“Campbell was yelling at me. You’re cute and comfy.” She feels so empty-headed, and no sense is going to come out of her, “Why was Campbell yelling at me….my head hurts.”

Clint’s telling her to focus, listen to his voice and trying to ask questions that she doesn’t quite hear because her ears are blurry, and his face is right there in front of hers. She reaches out, touches the side of his face, “Not going to be in the parade of losers.” She grins and giggles. Detached, it feels like being a heady drunk, and she doesn’t feel like she’s having any luck controlling her actions and her thought process is entirely out of her mouth right now.

The response team arrives, medics among them and she’s wheeled out in a stretcher after saying more and more slightly embarrassing things to Clint, the medics and the agents starting to inspect and investigate the lab.

                                                        *

Medical is completely used to agents and operatives and idiots who like to leave as soon as possible and no one even bats an eye when Darcy demands to go back upstairs. Darcy has full use of her body again, her head is clear and her wrist is bandaged up. It’s just a sprain, “Come on, I’ve got to go see Stark at least. He’s apparently head to toe in red and gold glitter.” Which means he popped the balloons in the Aston Martin. Good for him.

“Do you remember what happened?” the nurse asks and Darcy doesn’t have much of answer for that, and she’s said enough today that she wants to turn and hide a blushing face about so she keeps her mouth shut, “Exactly. You stay here until someone comes to get you to talk.”

“And that would be now.”  Barton stands at the doorway, “You decent?”

“I stole my clothes back an hour ago.” She grumbles, walking to him. Clint puts a hand on her good shoulder as he escorts her out.

“We got the video. Someone doctored them already, but we saw Campbell walking the hallway before it started looping. Think backwards, what do you remember?”

“Backwards?” she asks, brows furrowed, liking how his hand feels against her shoulder.

“You fell, right? What happened before that?”

Darcy thinks, “I was cleaning up a spill, and there was smoke coming from the counter.”

“Campbell was there?”

“No, he just left. He was yelling at me about his job and that I was getting in his way.” Darcy closes her eyes, presses on them with her fingers, out and down her face, “I think he might have been trying to distract me?”

“And you think I’m cute?” he stops in the hallway to say low near her ears, taking advantage of being lost in thought.

“Well yeah, I do tend to mean what I say…hey!” Darcy looks up at him with a pert expression, a smile tugging at her lips, “You distracted me. You can’t use my drugged out brain against me.”

“Yes I can. If I was going to use it against you, but I’m not.” He gets her walking again, and Darcy is really reluctant to move because she was sure there was a thing going on right there, an honest to goodness thing.

And that’s just not fair at all.

But Clint’s still leading her, and she’s figuring out that they are heading upstairs to the living area of the tower. But he sweeps her into a side corridor and wraps his arms around her and she freezes.

Darcy’s had the parade of losers for so long she’s not sure how to react anymore when someone legit crosses her way. And fuck, she’s just been knocked out and screamed at, and less than a day ago she was blowing up balloons because Tony was being an ass. She titters and tears up, even as soft lips graze over her own.

She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t want to, fuck, damn it. But the words are out of her mouth before her second thoughts get the best of her, “No….not right now? Okay? Revisit it tomorrow? Call it a date, whatever, but right now, I can’t do this.”

His face is a little sad, but understanding and he keeps his arm around her shoulder, asking if that’s all right, and she nods back. It’s at least not horribly awkward and he deposits her at Jane and Thor’s door with a quiet good night.

                                               *

When Darcy wakes up the next morning, she’s thankful for two things, a) that she’s waking up in a bed and not the floor and b) that the only thing that hurts is her wrist. She is not thankful for how she is being woken up, which is Jane shaking her damn bed.

“What the hell, is this an earthquake?” Darcy mumbles, sitting up in the bed, wiping sleep from her eyes, “I was reasonably assured that this building was up to code.”

“Did you access my private work yesterday?” Jane bites out. Jane is seriously upset with the crazy eyes and everything.

“No…I was in the lab and then I was unconscious, Jane. When would I have had the time to access your private research?”

Jane crosses her arms in front of her briefly before nervously moving them, “But you did?” she says in a small voice, “The access is biometric, and only you and I have access to them right now. And they’ve been copied. And you were….”

Darcy blinks a few times, processing the information and flashes from yesterday, “Oh shit.” She jumps out of bed and to her wardrobe, “Hey, avert your eyes missy.”

Jane looks confused, “What? Why?”

“Because I’m getting dressed and we really don’t have that sort of relationship.” Jane turns around while Darcy shimmies into the first bit of clean clothes she can find, not really caring if they match or anything. And slippers, because she so totally walk around the tower wearing slippers if she wants.

She grabs Jane and forces her through the door and out the suite, and ends up knocking on Barton’s. She barrels through when he opens and he does manage to step aside before getting a Darcy-shaped cannonball.

“I’m pretty sure that Campbell knocked me out to get access to Jane’s private work.” Darcy is back to being all business in voice, but she’s reached out a hand to Clint’s arm while she talks. Jane is not happy about letting anyone know what she’s working on but it’s not like Barton’s got high level physics down, and more or less accepts ‘it’s huge, but not something that SHIELD cares about’ as a reason.

What’s important is they have a reason, they have motive and they have Darcy’s fourth member of the cell. Now they just need to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much the part that ended my brain.


	7. Arrow

 

With a name (okay, an alias), a description and photos on file, it apparently doesn’t take the combined assets of SHIELD and Stark Industries more than a day to track Campbell down. She’s clearly out of the loop, despite how close in proximity she is  (literally, like ten feet away) to the Avengers team. She hears that Clint and Natasha have left with an inspired arsenal, and the next thing she knows she’s being escorted down to SHIELD again. Darcy only gets a glance at him when Campbell first brought through SHIELD for questioning, and she’s more concerned with the determined and truly angry coil of energy that Barton possesses as he passes her by.

Clint does, however, look at her. They haven’t seen each other since that night. She can’t read his face, schooled into SHIELD agent expression 4: Bored and Blank, but at the moment he passes, she can see the rest of him. Below the energy going through him, visible through his very veins, is a weary exhaustion, only noticeable because she’s seen him quiet and without guard.

When she’s called in to do the identifying, it’s made difficult by the sheer amount of violence that’s been done to Campbell. His face is bruising up and swollen.  Darcy wonders if the tightness she saw in Clint earlier was more for himself, for breaking his control on Campbell’s face.

If the scrawny assed thief didn’t deserve it, she’d almost feel bad about being the one that the control was lost over.

She wants to know how they found him; wants to see the thought processes and resources that are needed to bring down the people that hurt others. For Rajesh, whom she has never met, but Jane can remember his name and that means he must be important; for Jane, because there’s never been someone more committed to work and love; for herself because she does not like to be messed with. Maybe there are better uses of her skills than glitter.

 

                                                        *

This time, she pulls Barton into a side hallway, leans him up against the wall with both hands on his face and kisses him. It doesn’t stay quiet and it doesn’t stay soft.

 

                                                        *

 

A diplomatic packet can really be anything, that’s what they were taught in training. And for the most part, it is really a packet, and Darcy just walks through airports like she owns them. Don’t abuse the diplomatic immunity, but it is nice to walk around checkpoints.

Most of the time, the work is boring, and she mostly sits on planes, trains and automobiles. But she’s working; South Africa is beautiful when she’s there (which is mostly to sleep every fifth day if she’s lucky). New York feels like a dream away. Being a courier is just paying her dues.

But sometimes, a diplomatic packet is actually very secret and very hush hush and going above and beyond her normal work, and then it’s also actually a generator, and she’s wheeling it through the streets of some god-forsaken slum in Columbia, searching for the operative who is supposed to take possession of it. She feels eyes on her, watching her and the streets suddenly empty out.

Darcy doesn’t normally carry, normally doesn’t need to, not on the milk runs she’s normally on, but she’s also got a reputation built up. Need someone who doesn’t look dangerous and can blend in, handle herself in a tight spot? Get Ms Lewis on it. She’s got some weird training that we are just going to shut up and be thankful for. That line was on a sticky note in her last performance evaluation. She keeps a hand on her holster, because she isn’t stupid, she’s been down this street before and it’s always crowded with children and pickpockets and adults.

This generator is going to be the end of her. She has diplomatic immunity. The generator has diplomatic immunity.

“Sweetheart, are you lost?” The imposing man stepping in front of her however, does not give a shit about diplomatic immunity.

The best way out is through, and Darcy attempts to just keep walking, and ducking the swing that comes her way. She grabs the arm and twists it around before two more goons approach and try to take her down. The first lands a punch, and the other makes for the grab, and misses as Darcy redirects her body.

She’s tough, but she isn’t going to last long three against one and protect the generator. And that has to be her first consideration. She stalling now, blocking shots, getting into a better position to grab the dolly and book it when she hears a familiar noise and an arrow sinks into the chest of the first man.

The look on the goons faces is priceless, “Did he pay you enough to get your ass kicked by a courier and a bow and arrow?” she quips. There is always time for sarcasm, always. The answer appears to be no, as both of them run off into the shadows they came from.

Darcy finds the line of sight and calls out, “I was going to finish that myself, you know.”

“I like helping.” He answers back, “I’ve been told I’m a very good helper.”

“Get down here.” She points to the ground with a mock pout.

It takes a minute, but she’s patient until arms wrap around her, and she rests against Barton’s chest. He’s uniformed out, which means she shouldn’t linger too long in his embrace, but he presses a kiss first to the top of her head and then tilts her chin up to kiss her soundly. It’s been months and the heat gets to her first. It’s all lips, teeth and tip of the tongue and she loses her thought and sense of place until she’s released.

“What are you doing in this part of the world?” she asks, her grin so broad it lightens up the whole sentence. She meant for questioning, but she can’t keep her hands off of Clint’s arms and his guards, slipping her fingers around and under them.

“Would you believe waiting for a generator?”

“Oh god, seriously, do not tell me you are ‘Mr Luis Fernando’? Do our departments not ever talk to each other, I can’t hand this over to someone that I know is using fake identification.”

“No, Luis is a real person, an embassy handler. Trust me, they are actually doing your job right.” Clint assures her, “Where you off to next?”

“Georgia.” She answers, starting to wheel the generator down the street, and Clint walks next to her. People begin to fill the street again, at a trickle, seeing that the threat is over. There are few tears for the big man lying in the street, and Darcy has the distinct impression he was the local thug and there wouldn’t be much sympathy.

“You don’t usually have Eastern Europe as part of your routes,” Darcy looks at him sharply, asking without needing to say anything, “What’s the point of being a spy if I can’t keep tabs on my girlfriend?”

“Not the country, the state. Brunswick, specifically.”

Clint stops and fixes a serious expression, “FLETC?” Darcy nods back, “Huh, so Special Agent Darcy Lewis?”

“Crazy world, isn’t it? The choices we make, Clint, they’ll define us, our choices are our actions.”

He settles an arm around her waist as they walk to the dingy building he’s operating out of for whatever this mission is, a reinforcement of the other hard choices they make to live and be in the world together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this all the way through. I hope my plot by the seat of my pants didn't disappoint too much.
> 
> A few notes:
> 
> It is extremely difficult to get a job as a courier, and it's often a career of its own. I imagine SHIELD helped. Just a tiny push.
> 
> FLETC: Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the initial training phase of a Diplomatic Security Service Agent is the Criminal Investigator Training Program.
> 
>  
> 
> Google now firmly believes I am taking the exams and want to be a special agent.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [ ClintxDarcy Challenge Week](http://fyclintxdarcy.tumblr.com/post/29148997783/clintxdarcy-challenge-week-1)  
> I love weeklong challenges. I love making them into one plot even moreso. Enjoy the ride.


End file.
